‘The sweetest harmony’

We know little about John Calvin’s marriage to Idelette van Buren (aka Idelette de Bure).

That is certainly true when compared to the marriages of other Reformers. Martin Luther’s famous marriage to Katharina von Bora, for example, became something of a public exemplar for Protestants.

Not so Calvin’s marriage, which was very much in line with Calvin’s habitual reticence to go public about his personal affairs. Yet, in the year following Idelette’s death in 1549, he stated in his little tract Concerning Scandals (1550) that Idelette was ‘a rare woman’.